Library
Maghanap
Home / Romance / Burn For Me : Bound By The Mafia King / 27. HE Makes The Rules

Share

27. HE Makes The Rules

Author: Erika Lana Bell
last update Huling Na-update: 2025-05-10 14:20:58

Cali’s pov.

The second the ballroom doors shut behind us, I feel the heat of his glare burn into my back like a target drawn in gasoline.

He’s not touching me.

He doesn’t have to.

Every step I take toward the car feels like a countdown to destruction. The heels on my feet click too loud. My dress clings to my thighs like guilt. And inside, something wild is clawing at my ribs because I know—I know I fucked up.

I didn’t mean to.

The wine was strong—and out of sheer boredom and pent-up frustration, I had a little too much. Then Lucien appeared, all easy charm and perfect timing, and I needed the distraction. Needed anything to stop me from watching Hale with that cold, unreadable stare of his. The smug bastard didn’t even flinch when another woman practically threw herself at him earlier.

So maybe I wanted to remind him I exist.

Maybe I wanted him to feel it.

Maybe I just wanted him to grab me instead—

To pull me into his lap like I mattered. Like I was his.

Which is messed up, consider
Patuloy na basahin ang aklat na ito nang libre
I-scan ang code upang i-download ang App
Locked Chapter
Nakaraang Kabanata Susunod na kabanata

Pinakabagong kabanata

  • Burn For Me : Bound By The Mafia King   159. Estate

    Cali’s POV.The estate had never looked so sharp around the edges.By the time Hale’s jet touched down again and the wheels hummed against private tarmac, my fingers had cramped from holding the case too tightly. It hadn’t left my grip since we pulled it from the dirt. Not in the car. Not in the air. Not when I slept, if you could call closing your eyes for twenty minutes and hallucinating every horrible scenario “sleep.”Rosalita was already waiting at the entrance when we pulled in.Belle wasn’t with her.My stomach clenched, but the look Rosalita gave me calmed it before the fear could settle. She smiled softly. “Still asleep. The new meds make her groggy.”I nodded, murmured a thank-you, and stepped inside.Hale didn’t say anything until we reached the main study, the one with reinforced walls and blackout shutters. The one no one was allowed to enter unless he personally keyed them in.He locked the door behind us. Entered a code on the tablet in his pocket.Then finally—finally—

  • Burn For Me : Bound By The Mafia King   158. Stench Of Rot

    Hale’s POV.The building was already rotting.From the outside, the crematorium looked like a corpse left to weather. Vines crept over crumbling brick, windows boarded up, the stone angel above the doorhead so worn her face had eroded into a vague smudge. Nothing about this place said important. Which was the point.Cali didn’t speak as we approached. She stayed close, eyes sweeping the grounds with methodical precision. She hadn’t looked away from her surroundings since we stepped off the trail. Something about this place didn’t sit right. I could feel it too. It was too quiet. Too still. The kind of quiet that didn’t belong to ruins—it belonged to watchers.The front door gave under my hand with a reluctant groan.Inside, the smell hit first. Mold. Old ash. Something faintly metallic, buried under decades of decay. The main incinerator was exactly where Thorne said it would be—back room, beneath the broken rafters, split down the middle like someone had tried to disassemble it and f

  • Burn For Me : Bound By The Mafia King   157. Scattered

    Cali’s POV.The sky over Terni was a pale bruise when we stepped off the plane. Gray clouds hung low, casting long, uncertain shadows over the hills. The kind of weather that made everything feel heavier. Hollowed out. Like something important was about to happen and the earth knew it before we did.The drive to the northern forest took less than an hour. Hale sat beside me in the passenger seat, silent, watching the map flicker on his burner phone like it was some kind of countdown. Neither of us had slept. I didn’t try. My mind had been chewing on a single question for the last ten hours:Why would Thorne run?If he was the handler my mother said he was—if he was part of the structure before Burke took over—then he knew more than any of us did. He might have the names. The coordinates. The players behind the curtain. The ghosts Hale and I couldn’t trace, no matter how many files we cracked.But if he was still hiding, it meant he wasn’t done surviving.And that meant getting him to

  • Burn For Me : Bound By The Mafia King   156. Before Dusk

    Hale’s POV.The plane touched down just before dusk.From above, Marseille looked like a fractured mirror—sunlight skimming broken rooftops, alleyways carving shadows through old stone blocks. The city was beautiful in the way all old cities were: too old to care who bled in its streets. The kind of place where men like Matteo Costa didn’t just exist—they thrived.Cali sat across from me in the jet cabin, her boot tapping rhythmically against the floor, arms crossed, head turned toward the window but not really looking. She hadn’t said much since we left the estate. Just nodded when I handed her the burner, grunted when I passed her the holster, and studied the layout of Matteo’s last known location like it was a puzzle she intended to solve without speaking.I understood.She didn’t want to feel anything. Not yet.Not until there was something to burn.We exited through the back gate of the private airfield, picked up by one of my embedded local drivers—an old Corsican smuggler named

  • Burn For Me : Bound By The Mafia King   155. Thorne

    Cali’s POV.The silence that settled after the video ended wasn’t peaceful—it was oppressive. Dense. Like the air had thickened with every unspoken truth trapped between my ribs. I didn’t cry. I didn’t even breathe for a moment. I just sat there, still and clenched, as the weight of my mother’s final words vibrated through my bones.Thorne.The name had meant nothing when she first said it, but now? Now it felt like a detonator wired straight into the foundation of Burke’s empire.A handler. One who predated Burke’s control. One who might know the origin of all this—the ledgers, the blackmail files, the deals inked in blood that turned a power-hungry man into an untouchable monster. If those files still existed, if Thorne had survived whatever purge Burke had unleashed… we might finally have something. Something beyond retaliation. Something bigger than Hale’s vendetta or my grief.We might have the power to rip Burke’s empire out by the roots and salt the ground behind us.I pushed b

  • Burn For Me : Bound By The Mafia King   154. Trade

    Cali’s POV.Sleep had been a laughable suggestion.Even after collapsing into bed sometime after midnight, after Killian had been secured, after Hale had finally stopped pacing the perimeter of the house like a storm in a glass cage, I couldn’t shut my mind off. Every time I closed my eyes, it was his voice I heard. Killian’s voice, smirking its way through my skull, whispering venom I thought I’d buried long ago.I’d thought seeing him chained up would bring some satisfaction. I thought maybe I’d feel powerful again. But instead, the weight in my chest only grew heavier.By the time the first pale smear of light pushed against the curtains, I was already dressed and moving. The halls were silent, everyone either still asleep or giving me space. Hale had reinforced the basement security last night. A new code. A new scan. Not even I could walk straight in anymore.But that didn’t mean I couldn’t watch.I stopped at the panel mounted outside the sublevel entrance. Hale might’ve changed

Higit pang Kabanata

Maaari mong magustuhan

Galugarin at basahin ang magagandang nobela
Libreng basahin ang magagandang nobela sa GoodNovel app. I-download ang mga librong gusto mo at basahin kahit saan at anumang oras.
Libreng basahin ang mga aklat sa app
I-scan ang code para mabasa sa App
DMCA.com Protection Status